


beautiful, oh tonight

by MooseFeels



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: AU, Godzilla - Freeform, Journalism, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:23:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18640825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: Viktor's bored of prestige journalism. On a whim, he takes a new beat.





	1. Chapter 1

It is  _ so  _ fucking early in the morning. It is unbelievably early in the morning. It is so early in the morning, Viktor knows for a fact college students are going to bed. 

He yawns behind his hand. Pulls the cup of coffee to his lips and takes a long sip. It’s bitter and hot-- no cream, no sugar. He thanks god for it, in this moment. 

He wishes he knew why he took this assignment. It’s old news by this point. Ancient. Everyone knows about it, and the only people who still care are the fanatics, and that’s who he’s here profiling so--

Viktor takes a deep breath. 

He lets it go. 

“You want this,” he murmurs under his breath. “You wanted this.”

He takes another deep breath. 

He’s standing in front of a combini, at the cusp of four in the morning, waiting for a van. 

The door opens with a soft chime, and a blonde teen steps out of the store and onto the steps.

Viktor looks over at the teen. 

“Classes start real early?” He asks. 

The teen looks over at him. Dark bags under his eyes. He’s not from here, like Viktor. 

The teen flips him the bird. Viktor laughs, in spite of himself. 

A van pulls up in the street in front of the store. It’s  _ ancient _ . Sliding panel doors, radar equipment tacked up all over the top. There’s a logo painted on the side-- one Viktor recognizes from the website.

The driver leans out of the window and looks at both of them. 

“Yurio,” he says, “Are you being rude to our guest?”

The teen (Yurio, Viktor supposes) scoffs audibly before stomping up to the passenger seat the van. The driver climbs out. 

The driver is Viktor’s age, if not a little younger. He has a thermos in one hand and bright brown eyes behind his glasses. He smiles, looking at Viktor, unsure. 

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Katsuki Yuuri.” 

Viktor smiles, as best he can this early in the morning. “Viktor Nikiforov,” he says, extending his hand forward to shake. “Do you think we might be get lucky?”

Katsuki Yuuri shrugs. “No matter what happens, we’re lucky today,” he says. “I’m sorry about Yurio. He’s...fifteen.” He sighs with the word, eyes closing. 

Viktor laughs. “An intern?”

Katsuki shrugs. “It’s complicated,” he says. His eyes fluttered closed and he stills in front of him. He hands him the thermos. “I know it’s early.”

Viktor smiles, taking the thermos from him. “The good stuff?” He asks, chuckling. 

He nods. He looks at Viktor, turning just a little pink. “I-- I’m familiar with your work,” he says. “Mari was surprised to get your call. Are you sure you don’t want to--”   
“I’m right where I need to be,” Viktor says, interrupting. 

Katsuki looks at him for a moment, before he nods. “Are you comfortable riding in the back of the van?” He asks.

Viktor gestures with his hands, just barely. “I’m your guest,” he says. 

Katsuki opens the back door on the van. The interior is wild with computer components-- the blip of a radar rig, the flickering of computers, the hiss of a radio. Viktor looks at all of it, overwhelmed for just a moment. He pulls up his camera. “May I?” He asks. 

He looks at him. Raises his eyebrows. “Ah, sure!” He says. He steps out of the frame, to around the front of the van. 

Viktor snaps a picture, as he clambers in and buckles his seatbelt. Viktor climbs up into the back and closes the door. 

He pulls out a pen and a notepad. 

“So, Katsuki Yuuri-- what’s your title?” He asks. 

“I’m a regional director,” he says, looking back at viktor through the rearview window. “That sounds impressive-- all of Saga is one region because sightings are infrequent along this coast.” 

“What are your responsibilities?” he asks. “I understand that your position with the GPN is paid and not volunteer.”

Yuuri laughs. “We actual have a large employee networks; our citizen scientist networks are just more visible,” he says. “But I help coordinate our volunteers and I collect a lot of our data. And I’m in charge of the van.”

“And who are you?” Viktor says, addressing the teen. 

“No comment,” he says. 

Katsuki swats him on the arm, almost instantaneously. The teen huffs a sigh. “I’m Yuri Purisetsuki,” he says, in comfortable Japanese. “I run the sonar for him.”

“Where are you from?” Viktor asks him, in Russian. 

The teen freezes. 

“No comment,” he says, still in Japanese. 

Viktor shrugs.

There’s a beat, before Katsuki says, “We’re going to go check the data point at the cliff. We’ve been picking up a handful of seismic readings for the past day or two.” 

Viktor nods. “Why start the shifts this early?” He asks. 

“Oh,” Katsuki says. “Well, I have classes after this.”

Viktor looks from a computer monitor back to Katsuki. “You’re a student?” He asks. 

Katsuki shakes his head. “Kindergarteners,” he says. 

“Why don’t you check data sites on the weekend?” Viktor asks. 

“I do,” Katsuki answers. “Different data sites, though.”

It begins to rain. Katsuki turns on the windshield wipers. 

Viktor sees it, before he hears it. There’s something green on the computer monitor. Shifting, in the strange way scientific equipment measures movement for things as large as atmospheres. He looks at it, baffled, before the machine  _ pings _ , another machine chimes, at least two phones start ringing, and the radio hisses to life with chatter. 

“Move,” Yuri Purisetsuki says to him, unbuckling his seatbelt and maneuvering into the backseat easily. Viktor scoots over as Katsuki picks up the radio receiver. 

Viktor watches the teen in front of the console, sliding on a large pair of headphones and typing rapidly at one machine. 

“RD Katsuki,” he says over the radio. “We’re receiving a series of alerts--”

“Seismic activity, eastward,” the teen says, loudly. “Paired with water readings at Imarin-- they’re expecting surfacing in the hour.”

“--surfacing within the hour; put out evacuation advisories for all homes in zones one and two,” Katsuki says into the radio. “Anyone up? Over.”

The radio hisses and crackles. Viktor can’t hear what’s being said on it, over the sound of Yuri typing frantically and the still periodic  _ ping _ of it being picked up on the radar. 

Viktor looks at the readings-- at once as utterly familiar as a weather report and so much  _ more _ . He points his camera at the map and takes a snap, cursing himself for forgetting his hotfoot.  Katsuki takes an off ramp and starts heading back in the direction from which they came. 

There’s an abundance of chaotic chatter, both of them talking to each other, to people on the radio, to the machines themselves. Viktor’s Japanese is  _ excellent _ and his Saga-Ben passable, but the information flies so quickly that as soon as he’s put together what he’s hearing, there’s already another conversation to catch up to. He starts taking notes, as quickly as he can, pencil darting across the page, an automatic recorder more than an analyst and certainly not any help.

The van stop, suddenly, in the mouth of a tunnel. 

“Yurio,” Katsuki murmurs, very quietly. 

The teen flips a bank of switches. The consoles go dead. The light cuts in the van. 

“Shh,” Katsuki murmurs, very softly. 

Viktor brings his camera up to his eye. Zooms out of the car window, into the darkness outside. 

There’s a thudding sound, like the ground around them has a heartbeat. 

It shakes them, in the van.

Viktor thinks maybe-- maybe he sees something in the darkness ahead of them.

The thudding stops. 

Viktor squints his eyes. 

He sees it. 

Glittering, like an impossibly large gem, a singly dark eye emerges from the darkness a the end of the tunnel. 

Katsuki gasps and turns the ignition. The van roars to life, the headlights turning on, and that’s when Viktor  _ sees _ it. 

Sees him. 

Godzilla, big as life, at the end of the tunnel. 

Katsuki hits reverse the exact moment Viktor brings his camera to his eye and snaps a shot. 


	2. Chapter 2

Yuuri has seen him a  _ bunch  _ of times. Enough that the pages for his sighting journal are in the double digits. Yuuri has seen him enough to be considered an “expert.” Yuuri has seen him. 

He is still caught with absolute, shattering  _ awe _ every time he sees him. 

Yuuri guns it, backward, out of the seaside tunnel and into the open highway. It’s dark and rainy-- cloudy enough that even though sunrise is coming soon it’s still inky. He keeps looking behind though, going backwards down the highway. 

“Yuuri,” Yurio murmurs from the back. 

“I  _ know _ ,” Yuuri says. “I know!”

“Holy shit,” Viktor Nikiforov says from his backseat. 

Yuuri’s never died driving away from Godzilla before, and if he starts now when he has  _ Pulitzer Prize winning war-correspondent Viktor Nikiforov _ in his  _ fucking _ van, he’s going to--

Well, he’ll be dead. But he’ll be fucking livid, also. 

They curve around the mountain, the  _ footsteps _ getting closer and louder at every bend in the road. 

Yuuri squeals to a stop, facing toward the beach. The headlights face out, into the bay. 

And there he is. 

“Yurio,” Yuuri says. 

“Yep,” Yurio answers. 

Yuuri unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out of the driver’s seat. The wind is pulling around himself, sharp from the bay, whipping against him. 

It smells like the sea, but it also smells like something  _ else _ . Yuuri wouldn’t know how to describe it, in the same way he’s not sure how he would describe the smell of lightning. 

Yuuri stares out at him. He takes of his glasses. 

Beyond seeing, in the space between sight and not-sight, Yuuri would  _ swear _ he could see the very vibrating material of radiation itself. Like another sense, 

In the early, purpling morning, Yuuri stands in the road and watches a god stand in the surf. 

The van door pops open and Viktor Nikiforov hauls ass out of it, camera held to his eyes, clicking constantly, all the way through a roll of film. 

He pulls his camera down, looking out as Godzilla lumbers back into the sea. 

“He clouds film,” Yuuri says. “Even on shielded cameras.”

Viktor looks from the bay to his camera to the bay again. 

“Bullshit,” he says.

Yuuri shakes his head. “I promise,” he says. 

They stand there for a long moment, watching the natural disaster shuffle away from the shoreline. Out of the corner of his eye, Yuuri can see Viktor’s silvery hair catch on the wind. 

Yuuri yawns behind his hand. “I have classes that start in two hours.  We can talk more then.”

Yuuri turns to step back into the van when Viktor says, “What about the data?”

“That’s what Yurio is for,” Yuuri calls back. 

He gets into the van and buckles his seatbelt. He takes a few deep breaths. 

Yurio is typing fanatically on a computer. 

“Looks like that dumbass was just cruising,” Yurio murmurs from the computing console. “He barely surfaced according to the monitors.”

Yuuri nods. He takes a breath that’s a little more shaky than he’d like.

Yuuri opens the glove compartment and pulls out his sighting journal. 

_ May 17th GY 55. 05:10. Imarin. Sufaced. _

He looks at the lines with the other sightings on this page, turns the few back to the start.  _ January 3rd GY 40. 16:20.  _

He looks at the notebook before closing it. Viktor piles into the back of the van almost reluctantly.

“Sit in the front,” Yurio says, not pulling his attention from the monitor. “I have work to do and you’ll only get in the way.”

Viktor climbs out and heads back around to sit in the front seat. 

He’s looking at his camera, biting his bottom lip. “I promised my editor shots,” he murmurs. 

Yuuri shakes his head. “Can’t get film images of him,” he says. “And digital cameras react to him sometimes, too. Why do you think there are so few actual pictures?”   
Viktor shrugs. “I guess I never thought we needed more than the one until now,” he says. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath and drives them back into town. 

Viktor has his notepad out, tapping it, before he says, “So how long have you done this?”

“I’ve been with the GPN for about ten years,” he says. The rain falls in fat drops. There’s low thunder, far away. “I’ve been RD for about three of them.”

Viktor nods. “Is starting so young normal?” He asks.

Yuuri shrugs. “It’s not an old man’s game, if that what you mean,” he says.

Viktor out the window. “You also teach?” He says.

Yuuri nods. “Everyone has bills to pay.” 

The rest of the drive to the parking lot where Yuuri picked them up is quiet. He pulls into the lot. Viktor unbuckles his seatbelt and moves to step out of the van. 

“Wait,” Yuuri says. He rummages around in his glove box for a moment. He pulls out a tube of anti-nausea medication. “When you get to the hotel, take a shower and get rid of your clothes. You’ll probably vomit some. If it persists, go to the clinic.”

Viktor looks at him. Looks at the proffered tube. 

“Really?” He asks. 

“Did Mari give you the pamphlet?” He asks.

“Would it have told me I was at risk for radiation poisoning?” Viktor asks.

“Yes,” Yuuri says. 

“Stupid fucking idiot,” Yurio murmurs from the backseat, just loud enough for Yuuri to hear him. 

“You should go shower,” Yuuri says. “I’m available after school.”

Viktor nods a couple of times and takes the medication from Yuuri’s hand. He looks at him, for just a moment. “One more quick question,” he says. “Why did you get out of the van back there?” 

Yuuri takes a breath. 

Yuuri can only tell whether or not he’ll make landfall. He’s not sure how he knows, but he’s never been wrong. There’s a way the air feels-- like waiting for a storm to roll in. There’s no computer system to match this, no algorithm or piece of AI that can do this the way he can.  Nothing else can stand on a road early, early in the morning and know from how the night air falls on their skin that they don’t need to evacuate. 

“I had a good feeling,” he says, instead of all that. 

Viktor looks at him, like there’s something to Yuuri he can’t quite grasp yet, before he opens the door and steps out of the van. 

Yuuri pulls away to drive home. 

“He’s fucking insufferable,” Yurio says, still hunched over the console. 

“Shut up,” Yuuri says. There’s no venom in it. 

“You’re disgusting. I can’t believe I have to be involved in this,” he says. 

“You were the one who insisted on coming,” Yuuri says. “Blame Mari for this.” 

Yurio looks up and groans. “Of course your fucking sister would make your crush interview you,” he moans. 

“He’s not a crush,” Yuuri says. “I don’t even know him.” 

“Right, right, because you’re monogamous with the monster in the bay, I forget,” he spits back.

“It’s  _ not _ a crush,” Yuuri repeats, looking up at the rear-view mirror. 

It’s  _ not _ a crush. It’s not. Owning someone’s book does not constitute a crush. Owning all of someone’s books, even. Subscribing to their paper for the past six years. Reading his blog. 

“You’re a bad fucking liar,” Yurio says. “Hey can you drop me at Minako’s? I left my books there.”

* * *

Viktor has the film developed at the photolab in the combini.

It’s so fogged it’s useless. Just blurred clouds of color, a few places in sharp relief.

He looks at them for a long moment before taking a deep, deep breath and stalking off down the street to his hotel room. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the explanation: have you ever thought about how big and sexy godzilla is.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not that Viktor didn’t do research before the trip, it’s that he didn’t think there was all that much more to  _ know _ . Viktor knows what everyone knows, and he read all the government pamphlets and he spoke with their contact at the organization, but--

Viktor stands in his rented room, brushing his teeth. He has his clothes zipped up in a plastic bag and his hair up in a towel. It’s day, finally, the sun up in the sky and sunlight filtering into his hotel room. 

He picks up his phone from his nightstand. No messages. 

He sits down on the futon and pulls out his computer. 

He closes his eyes, remembering. 

Grey light. 

Something, just beyond his grasp, glittering in the darkness. 

Viktor opens his eyes. He sighs, heavily, and pulls on some clothes. 

He opens the envelope with his photographs in it again. He looks at them, captured for a moment by them, by their vagueness. By the thing they could nearly show. 

He frowns, tossing the envelope back on the bed. He steps out of his room and heads down the hall. 

The woman who runs this place, she has a meal laid on a low table-- beside the rice cooker is a stack of bowls, balanced carefully. He sits down, as she pours him a small cup of tea. 

“Thank you,” Viktor says. 

She nods. “How are you feeling?” She asks him. 

Viktor smiles. “I’m fine,” he says. “Thank you.”   
“We have ginger,” she says, “if you get sick, from the radiation.”

Viktor looks at her, surprised. “Do you get a lot of...chasers?” He asks. 

She opens the top of the rice cooker and spoons a bowl full. “Yuuri is my son,” she says, passing him the bowl. 

Viktor looks over the cup of tea at her. He reaches out and grabs his rice. “I had no idea,” he says. “Does that mean--”

“Mari is our oldest,” she says, nodding. She gets up and goes to the kitchen. Viktor takes another sip of tea. She returns with her hands full. She spoons her own bowl of rice and pulls an egg from the bowl. She cracks it, raw, into the rice. Dresses it with shake of soy sauce and stirs it all together, vigorously. 

Viktor watches her, before he takes an egg of his own. 

He cracks it, and as he stirs his rice, he looks back at the innkeeper. “You wouldn’t be willing to go on the record, would you?” He asks.

* * *

It turns out there’s only one kindergarten in a twenty mile area. It does mean Viktor has to leave the comfort of the minshuku to bike fteen miles uphill. 

He’s glad he took the nausea medication. He’s not sure if the nausea is real or psychosomatic at this point. 

It’s just begun to rain as he stops in front of the school. He stands outside at the gate, watching as a flood of tiny children wander off under the care of parents or older siblings. He stands there, in the rain, watching, until Katsuki Yuuri appears, somehow totally different from the man this morning. 

Viktor watches as he kneels down to tie a child’s shoe and put a hat on another. He watches as he stands up to speak with a parent, smiling warmly and chatting amiably. It’s uncanny, that he could be the same intense, baffling man who stood at the side of the road as if crazed, watching a monster disappearing back into the sea. There’s a fire that’s suddenly absent, and without it, he seems somehow  _ ordinary _ . 

Viktor pulls up his camera and takes a couple of shots of Katsuki. He turns and takes a few of the dark, green trees, heavy with rain. 

He waits there, at the edge of the school, for a long time, until Katsuki approaches him. No longer wearing a windbreaker, but with the same blue-framed glasses, same messy, dark hair. The same man. A different man. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks. 

Viktor shrugs. “I’ve felt worse,” he says, honestly. 

Katsuki smiles. “Good,” he says. “You probably have questions.”

“I’d like to actually interview you, yes,” Viktor says. 

Katsuki nods. He gestures toward the school. “Step into my office,” he says, laughing a little under his breath. 

Viktor always forgets how  _ tiny _ classrooms for kindergarteners are. He hasn’t really spent a lot of time in them since he was a kindergartener, he supposes. There’s a row of cubbies against a back wall. There are toys and bookshelves. Every inch of every wall is plastered with expressive, ebullient art-- a flock of handprint birds with names carefully written on them, a cut paper mural of flowers and frogs, posters of the hiragana, of numbers. There’s a chalkboard and a desk, a classroom plant growing bright green beside the windows. 

“So,” Viktor says. “You weren’t going to tell me your family ran the minshuku, were you?”

Yuuri’s eyes flutter closed. His cheek turn pink. “I didn’t realize you were staying there,” he says.

Viktor shrugs. “Your mother is lovely,” he says. “Very hospitable.”

“We ran a full onsen, before Hasetsu was destroyed,” Yuuri answers. He opens his eyes, to stand in front of a chalkboard and erase it fully. “It had been in the family for more than a hundred years. Ma told me that a bear gave it to our great-great-great-great-great grandfather.” He puts the eraser down in the tray. His hands rest there a moment. “Mari and I, we saw him. I was nine. What didn’t get crushed was declared hazardous by the government. They’re still studying if the long-term effects of his power will make people sick.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri. “You said it wasn’t an old man’s game,” he says. 

“None so far,” Yuuri answers.

Viktor remembers him standing there, on the road, watching. 

Viktor flips open his notebook. “So, you’ve been Regional Director for three years.


	4. Chapter 4

Viktor Nikiforov shows up in the rain on the porch of his school and Yuuri would swear his heart skips a beat.

Yuuri's followed his career for years. He has to, is the thing-- it helps Yuuri's work enormously to stay abreast of current affairs, especially millitary spending and American intervention. Yuuri can't pretend like he hasn't picked a favorite correspondent from the inches thick stack of papers he tears through every week. It's not like everyone hasn't picked a favorite correspondent.

Viktor Nikiforov is a genius. Award winning. Universally respected.

Viktor Nikiforov is perched on top of a bicycle, with a clear bubble umbrella in one hand and a film camera around his neck. Perched on a bike in the rain, outside of Yuuri's school.

And now he's in Yuuri's classroom. Yuuri's still in his apron, and he knows for a fact he has tempera paint on his ass and dark circles around his eyes.

It was easy to pretend to have it together this morning. He had something to do; scans to throw an eye on and a radio to switch through. He had his expertise to wear like armor, to hide behind. Now, though, with nothing but the buzzing air of his empty classroom between them, it's much harder to act like this is normal and he's not having a heart attack to see him here.

"Do you see a lot of him up here?" he asks Yuuri.

Yuuri shrugs. "Every couple of months or so. He'll surface and usually just stomp around in the sea for a bit. Our seismic warnings help a lot. We usually manage to evacuate the beaches and harbors," he answers. "We've been very lucky. Not everyone is."

He looks up from his notes, up at Yuuri. He pauses. "What does lucky look like?" He asks.

"Everyone loses something or someone to him," he says. "Some people lose everything. We don't see many attacks and we've been able to coordinate with the local government to help with emergency access and preparedness. We've been lucky. Most people don't lose everything here."

He studies Yuuri, his blue eyes searching him.

Yuuri swallows, his throat dry. He turns back around to the chalkboard and starts to write tomorrow's date on it, along with some information about tomorrow's activity. It's summer. They're talking about the life cycle of cicadas. He'll have them build paper boxes to carry them home when they go catch them in the coming weeks.

"Can they read, this small?" Viktor asks him.

"The children?" Yuuri asks. He looks at his lesson plan while he writes. "Some of them can. Maybe not all of it, but some of it. And they'll ask each other and they'll ask me. And if it's written on the board, they'll know. They're so small. Uncertainty is hard."

"Why kindergarten?" Viktor asks him.

Yuuri pauses.

"I won't...I won't have children of my own," he says, after a long moment finding his voice. "I-- I'll be lucky to live to thirty. And exposure to the radiation...some people in town, they don't even want me to teach. Much less date." He fumbles for the words, his breath stuttering. "It's not the same. But it's good to be part of their lives, even if it's just for a little bit. Just in passing."

"You said they were still studying the effects," Viktor says.

"The prognosis isn't optimistic," Yuuri answers, huffing out a laugh. _Ask my dad._ "I'm sorry. I know that's not...I know that's heavy. I'm sorry."

"I asked a question," Viktor says. "You gave me an honest answer. Don't apologize."

Yuuri looks at his chalkboard. He's drawn a bright, happy sun in the corner. Beside it is the date and his name.

He turns back around. "I thought you wanted to know more about him, not about me," he says.

Viktor smiles. It's dazzling. "Everyone's written about him," he says. "Tell me more about you."

Yuuri shakes his head. He takes off his apron and grabs his bag from his desk. "I'm not that interesting," he says. "Have you met Mari yet? In the flesh?"

Viktor shakes his head, following him out of the classroom. "Not yet," he sasys.

Yuuri carefully steps out of his uwabaki and into his shoes. They step out the door and Viktor carefully gets back onto the bike. Yuuri laughs.

"That's my bike," he says.

Viktor laughs, too. "Really?" he says. "Do you live--"

Yuuri shakes his head. "I have my own place in town with Yurio," he answers. "The bike is there most of the time since we got the van. I could give you a ride back, if you like." It's still raining in fat, early summer drops.

Viktor grins.

* * *

The van is different in the light of day and without every instrument going off at once. It's still overwhelming and strange, but it's seems so much less impressive somehow. Ordinary. Run down. It's easier to see the dust gathering in the cupholders and the faded photograph propped up in the dash.

"You were right about the film," Viktor says.

Yuuri laughs. "I can't believe you didn't know," he says. "It's the first thing you learn. It's the first thing everyone learns."

Viktor buckles his seatbelt and huffs. "Still a pain in the ass," he says.

Yuuri nods. "Absolutely. But it makes seeing him special."

He puts his keys in the ignition and the engine rumbles to life.

Viktor thinks about this morning, about the look on Yuuri's face. The fascination and awe.

"You should really talk to Mari," Yuuri says. "She runs the organization."

"I'll get around to her," Viktor says, honestly. "She's not here in town, though."

 _I have my own place in town with Yurio_. The sentence echoes in Viktor's head. The intern. The one who didn't want to talk. 

The road winds slowly away from the school like a lost ribbon. "You said your family ran a..." He flips back through his notes.

"An onsen," Yuuri interrupts. "A hot spring."

Viktor nods, writing the words down. "Did Yurio also run it with you?" He asks. 

Yuuri shakes his head. "Yurio's only been here for a year or so. We left Hasetsu when I was nine."

"Does he have family here?" Viktor asks. 

"Just us," Yuuri replies. "He tries to visit Moscow to see his family as often as he can, though."

Viktor frowns. "How old is he?"

Yuuri laughs. "He's fifteen," he answers. "He also has his Master's, though. He's the smartest person I've ever met. Well, the smartest person that isn't Mari."

The rain falls against the window pane, fat and rhythmic. "Right," Viktor says. He flips his notebook closed. "Thank you for the ride, by the way."

Yuuri nods back, not looking away from the road. 


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri pulls the van into the garage underneath the rest of the house and closes the door. He sits there for a moment, just by himself. 

He runs his hands over his face and takes a deep breath. Long, weird day. 

Yuuri holds the image of Viktor stepping out of his van in his mind. His silvery hair falling into his eyes, tucking his notebook into his jacket pocket. Stepping into the house where Yuuri’s mother lives. 

Yuuri closes his eyes and takes a long, deep breath. He grabs his bag from work and steps out and into the house. He slides out of his shoes and steps into his house. 

“I’m home,” he calls. 

“ _ Shhh!”  _ Yurio hisses from the table. “Busy!”   
Yuuri nods. The setup is the same as it always is-- a couple of laptops open on the table next to hookup boxes, the synth, and the oscilloscope. Yurio’s headphones are bulky around his ears, his expression intent, his eyebrows drawn down intensely. There’s a halo of glasses around the setup, half full of water and tea. There’s a bowl of rice, half eaten, from this morning as well. 

Yuuri goes to the kitchen and grabs a bowl for himself, loading it with rice and natto from the fridge. He takes a bite as he sits down at the other end of the table and opens his own laptop. Email from Mari about the surfacing this morning and a stack of seismic activity reports from the stations up and down the coast. They saw the surfacing at Imarin but it looks like there was also a surfacing in the next region over. Yuuri nods, looking it over. The information meshes with the data they already have on file. It’s good-- consistent tracking data means they’ll actually build a predictive model, and a predictive model means better evacuation planning. 

“How was work?” Yurio asks him, suddenly. 

Yuuri looks up from his email, over to Yurio. His headphones are off. The laptops are closed. He has his bowl and the glasses in his hands. 

Yuuri shrugs. “They had fun in the rain,” he says. “They weren’t even woken up by the surfacing this morning.”

Yurio nods.

“How goes the project?” Yuuri asks.

“Data from this morning was mostly useless,” Yurio answers. “Couldn’t get close enough for a clear recording and what I did get that fucking tourist chattered over.”

“He’s a journalist,” Yuuri interrupts. “Not a tourist, Yurio.”

“He’s an  _ idiot _ ,” he says. “He didn’t even know not to use film. And besides, the only difference between a journalist and a tourist is a paycheck.”   
“Is that why you used Japanese with him and not Russian?” Yuuri asks. 

Yurio rolls his eyes. He steps into the kitchen, bringing his dishes with him. “He’s obnoxious,” he says. 

“He barely spoke to you,” Yuuri answers. 

“Whatever,” Yurio says. “Just because you have a crush on him doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole.”

Yuuri sighs. Closes his own laptop. “You make it hard to be your friend,” he says. 

Yurio freezes where he stands. His posture goes rigid. “I don’t like the media,” he says. “I don’t like the way they treat us. I don’t trust him.”

Yuuri looks at Yurio, standing with his back to him, at once older than he was when Yuuri first met him and still every inch the child he once was. Hurt. Afraid. 

“He’ll be gone soon,” Yuuri says. “You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t have to come out with him tomorrow if you don’t want to-- I can run the collection on my own if you need me to.”

“I can do it,” Yurio says. “I can run it. It’s fine.”

“Can you be...civil?” Yuuri asks.

Yurio sighs. His shoulders sag. “Sure,” he says. He leaves for the kitchen. 

Yuuri gets up from the table with his own bowl and stands beside Yurio at the sink. They wash and dry the dishes, letting them dry on the rack beside the sink. 

“I’m going to talk to Dad,” Yuuri says.    
Yurio nods. “I’m going to see if I can salvage anything else from the morning. Beka told me he had some files for me, too.”

“Don’t stay up late,” Yuuri says. “It’s an early morning.”

“It’s early every morning,” Yurio replies. 

The shrine is in a small room in the back of the house. It’s quiet and still. Yuuri lights the incense and kneels down before it. 

The picture of his dad was from his birthday. He’d just turned 36. He’s smiling, cheeks flushed from sake. 

“Hey, Dad,” Yuuri murmurs. 

The room is quiet. The rain hits the window. The sun slowly sets. The incense burns low. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is it a kamidama or a butsudan that yuuri visits in episode one? i think it's a kamidama but i'm genuinely not sure.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's maybe a little sad.

_ How is your journalist? _ Mari's text reads. 

Yuuri blinks awake and stares at it for a long moment. He sighs, heavily. 

Yuuri's early morning. Mari's late night. One of them is awake for each of the twenty-four hours of the day, he's sure, and it means that Mari going to bed usually overlaps neatly with Yuuri waking up. 

_ He's not my journalist _ , he types back.

His phone rings. 

"He's not my journalist," Yuuri says. "He's just  _ a _ journalist--"

"I take it Ma hasn't shown him your bookcase yet," she interrupts. Yuuri swears he can hear the cigarette smoke leave her lungs. 

"She's not going to show him my bookcase," Yuuri says. "My books live here."

"Damn," she responds. "How'd the surfacing go?"

Yuuri looks into his dark bedroom, to the blue-as-night air that presses against the glass of his bedroom window. 

He takes a deep breath. It hangs still between them for a moment. 

Yuuri hears his sister exhale. "Yeah," she says. 

Yuuri and Mari have each other, more than anyone else on Earth. Yuuri remembers Mari holding onto him, as tight as she could, as they ran away from the house further inland. Yuuri remembers Mari holding him so tightly he thought she would crush him as they watched, from the roof of an apartment building in town. Yuuri remembers seeing him for the first time. He remembers  _ her _ seeing him for the first time. 

Yuuri doesn’t think anyone can understand, quite the way Mari does. Not even Yurio or anyone else at their organization. 

“My students slept through it,” he says. 

Mari chuckles, darkly. “They don’t know a world without it,” she says. 

“How’s the city?” He asks.

“Busy,” she says. “Government won’t listen to me, but what else is new.”

It’s quiet between them again, for a moment that stretches.

“Why did you send him here?” Yuuri asks. “You make all the policy decisions.”

“I don’t make  _ all _ the policy decisions,” she says. “You--”

“I’m barely even a field researcher,” Yuuri says. “I’m a kindergarten teacher with a weird hobby.” 

“ _ Yuuri _ , you’re the field leader for the region with the most significant activity,” she says. “This isn’t a hobby for you and you know it.”

“You’re the president and the face of the organization. We agreed it’s better that way. The press bother Yurio and I-- I’m not--”

“Listen,” Mari interrupts. She pauses, another long moment stretching between them. “You know how I get routine exams?”

Yuuri’s stomach  _ plummets _ .

“The outcomes are a lot better than they used to be,” Mari says, going very quickly now. “Especially because they caught it so quickly. But I’m having surgery. And after that-- after that, who knows.”

Yuuri’s head spins, just a little. He feels nauseous. 

“They think it looks good,” Mari continues. “They think it looks good, okay, Yuuri? Hey-- Yuuri?”   
“ _ Mhm _ ,” Yuuri manages, around the raw panic that it welling over into him. 

_ Oh, God, not Mari. Not Mari.  _

“They think it looks good, but maybe we need to start planning,” Mari says. “I can’t get lucky forever.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath. And another. 

“You weren’t going to tell me,” he says. 

“I was,” Mari says. “I was. I was just also going to wait.”

Yuuri takes a deep breath, again. 

“Mari, I can’t--”   
“You have to,” she says. “Yurio will take it from you, when he’s ready, but he’s not ready yet. And Minako--”

“What about Minako?” Yuuri says. “She’s great with media--”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Mari asks, voice quiet. 

Yuuri feels his blood freeze. And instead of everything being very, very fast it goes very, very still. 

“Oh,” Yuuri says. 

“The doctor says maybe a couple of years,” she says. “She wants to spend it...how she wants to spend it.”

Yuuri lies there, in his bed. Very awake and very, very tired. 

“Okay,” Yuuri says. “I’ll do my best. Until you get better and until Yurio gets old enough.”   
“I know,” Mari says. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Yuuri answers. 

He turns over, curling up on his side. “You can’t...not yet,” he whispers. 

“I won’t,” Mari says. “Not for a while yet.”

The first landfall, it was so close to where Dad was. Gone to the market pick up the day’s supply, for the restaurant. And in a matter of weeks, he was gone. 

Mari yawns. Yuuri does, too. 

“Go to bed,” Yuuri murmurs. 

“Let Yurio collect the data this morning,” Mari answers. “Sleep in.”

Yuuri lays there for a long moment, before he says quietly, “Come here. At least once before it happens. See us.”

“I will,” Mari says. “Stay on the phone while I fall asleep.”

“I will,” Yuuri answers, if for no other reason to be held in his sister’s company while he can be. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short one

**Author's Note:**

> i can explain


End file.
